


My Friend, the Knife

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Series: The Magnificent Inquisition [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragon Age Fusion, Dalish!Vasquez, Gen, M/M, Qunari!Faraday, Vashoth!Faraday, blood mage!Vasquez
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 03:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15088193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: Folk might find the Dalish strange, but they find blood mages infinitely stranger.





	My Friend, the Knife

**Author's Note:**

> Uh, hey everyone! Been awhile, huh?
> 
> Though I haven’t been very active in the fandom proper for a hot minute, I’ve spent a truly ridiculous amount of time discussing a Dragon Age AU with **thesummoningdark** \- complete with Very Involved headcanons about everyone’s backstory and how they came together - and I figured a silly scene between Vashoth!Faraday and Dalish!Vasquez might be a nice, soft return to posting. I’ve missed writing these nerds in the past many, many months and hope to get back to it more frequently, which means there’s a decent chance you’ll be seeing more of these jerks in Thedas.
> 
> In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this bit of silliness!

It turns out that saving the world involves spending a lot more time sitting around drinking than Faraday had initially suspected. Not that he minds. There are worse ways to waste a day than loitering in the Herald’s Rest, chasing mugs of Ferelden beer with hearty sips off the maaras-lok he keeps in a flask on his belt, basking in the familiar hullabaloo and bard song. Particularly when he has such fetching company posted up across the table, even if said company is more preoccupied with peering blearily into the bottom of a nearly empty mug than engaging in lively conversation.

Vas is something of an odd bird. Antivan Dalish, with a faceful of funny red markings that he’s likely to stab you for asking about - Faraday has learned from experience - and a wicked little curved blade that he calls Maria sheathed high on his ribs. He’s a looker, taller than most elves, lean and fairly affable for all that a lot of folk tend to be skittish around him. Partially because everyone who’s not Dalish gets a little weird about the Dalish, though the more prevalent source of said discomfort is Vas’s tendency to split himself open with Maria’s sharp edge whenever he needs to work real, hearty magic. Folk might find the Dalish strange, but they find blood mages infinitely stranger.

Vas has tried to be more subtle about it now that their humble seven-man mercenary outfit has bellied up to the Inquisition. He uses his staff mostly as a bludgeoning weapon, leaving Maria sheathed and waiting until he gets clipped by an enemy to start weaving spells from his own blood - a practice which has recently spurred Faraday into some heated conversations about Vas courting damage more foolishly than is necessary - but there are a lot of eyes on a battlefield and at least a few of them have functioning brains somewhere behind. Luckily for them all, the Inquisitor and her advisory board are mired firmly on the willfully blind side of pragmatism, and the Herald herself seems to like Vas well enough. Last time she had an evening to kill at the Rest, he’d made her laugh so hard she cried, which speaks well to her ability to see the person past the methods, and to the likelihood that Vas will walk freely out of Skyhold after this is all over instead of disappearing into a mystery cell - assuming there’s a world left to walk back out into, that is.

There’s not altogether much they can do about the world-saving piece at the moment. Not with half the Inquisition off wandering Emprise du Lion while the other half - and nearly the full roster of Bull’s Chargers - has been dispatched to the Hissing Wastes with the fussy Tevinter mage who’s made a favored hobby of staring suspiciously at Vas across any room they happen to inhabit at the same time.

The rest of their small outfit of killers-for-hire has scattered to the winds, taking advantage of the off-day to their own tastes. As far as Faraday knows, their indefatigable leader is off pursuing a bounty of his own - likes to keep his hand in the business in his free time. Horne, who takes any spare moment to bend a knee to Andraste, is likely holed up in the chapel or lending some kind of aid therein. Red tends to keep his own counsel, and good money would hazard that Billy and Goody are either sequestered away in the room they share or exhausting their particular talents to the benefit of the Inquisition on behalf of Josephine or Sister Nightengale, though they’ll likely put in an appearance once the sun has sunk a little nearer to the horizon.

He’s halfway through wondering what kind of bizarre espionage shit Leliana might have dreamed up for them when the thought diverges sharply into something that piques even more of his curiosity. Faraday takes a long, unabashedly sloppy gulp of his ale, smacking his lips and wiping his wrist across his mouth, chasing head from his beard. He tilts his head, and he must be a little drunker than he thought because one horn nearly scrapes the wall. He squints thoughtfully and asks across the table, “Who’d win?”

Even without the lion’s share of the Chargers there carousing and lending to the fracas, it’s plenty loud, and Vas doesn’t look up. He blinks a long, slow blink down at the dregs of ale in his mug and then narrows his eyes suspiciously. Faraday huffs a sigh and flicks one of the dice they’d been playing with earlier gently in Vas’s direction.

The motion catches the elf’s eye and he looks up, brow furrowed, face flushed under the sharp, spiralling lines etched in red across his skin, eyes glassy with the lazy glaze of inebriation. He doesn’t say anything, but he lifts his eyebrows expectantly.

“Who’d win?” Josh repeats, a little louder, and Vas’s brow pulls back down into a furrow.

“What are you talking about, bueycito?” His voice is rich and deep and smooth, slurred with booze and that thick Antivan accent. He takes a fumbling sip of his ale, staring confusedly at Faraday over the top of his glass.

“You and Billy,” Faraday clarifies, gesturing between two imaginary people with his mug, sloshing ale over the sides as he does. “You’re both scary master assassins, right?”

“Sí,” Vas agrees cautiously, because for all that his and Billy’s status as Antivan Crows is something of an open secret, they don’t usually discuss it in public. Another of those things that tend to make layfolk squeamish if they’re forced to look directly at it.

Faraday inclines his head again. This time, one of his horns _does_ scrape the wall, and he jerks back so fast his neck twinges. Across the table, Vas snickers into the last lonely mouthful of his ale.

“So,” Faraday continues, as if there isn’t brick dust drifting down onto his shoulders and a sizable gauge in the mortar just beside him, “if you two had to duke it out, who’d win? You, or Billy?”

Much to Faraday’s surprise, Vas actually seems to consider this for a long moment, mouth pressed into a line and gaze pinned somewhere in the middle distance. He tilts his head to one side, then the other, weighing some set of abilities and aptitudes at which Faraday couldn’t even begin to guess, and then says decisively, “Billy.”

Faraday’s eyebrows jump toward his hairline and he huffs a laugh that’s half amusement, half shock.

“No shit?”

Vas nods, and Faraday leans back in his seat, plucking the much-loved flask from his belt and twisting the cap off.

“Huh,” he says, and helps himself to a long, slow sip, savoring the burn as it lights down his throat. “Awful humble of you to say so.”

“No point in lying,” Vas shrugs, draining the pitiful puddle from the bottom of his glass and setting it down firmly on the table. “I would make it difficult but he would win in the end.” He considers for another moment, tilting his head and conceding, “Unless I got very lucky.” He cuts Faraday a small, sharp smirk and adds lowly, “We spend a lot of time learning how not to let other people get lucky.”

Faraday snorts and takes another quick sip of maaras-lok.

“That ain’t news, V,” he teases, knocking his boot against Vas’s under the table. The mage rolls his eyes and kicks back. It’s not hard enough to be a reprimand, and he leaves his foot pressed gently against Faraday’s when he’s done, so Faraday counts it a win and lets himself enjoy it. “What about you and - ”

Vas holds a hand up before he can finish, and says warningly, “I don’t want to debate the outcome of fighting every person at Skyhold, bueycito.”

“Not _everybody_ ,” Faraday promises, holding his hands up in mercy and grinning a little at the slightly harassed look that’s wandered onto Vas’s face. “Just one.”

Vas sighs through his nose, drumming his fingers against the side of his empty glass.

“Fine,” he mutters. He waves his other hand in little circles in the air in front of him. “Make it short, I need another drink.”

“You and me,” Faraday says easily. He lounges back even further in his seat, letting his boot slide and drag along Vas’s as he does, knocking their knees gently together. He leans until his horns knock softly into the wall at his back, arching an eyebrow and injecting all the lascivious intent he can muster into the grin he flashes at Vas across the table. “Who’d win?”

It’s nothing they haven’t done before - Faraday likes a good fight and a good fuck and Vas is precisely the right kind of ornery little shit to abide him, which is to say nothing of his natural talent for finding precisely the right angles to reduce a Qunari with a good six inches on him to a sobbing, moaning mess - though between the giant hole tearing open the sky and their pursuit of the coalition angling to repair said hole, there hasn’t been an abundance of time to indulge in recent weeks. They aren’t quite lovers, not the way Billy and Goody are, but they’re good together, and it’s a rare day where the weather is nice and the hours stretch before them empty of critical tasks needing doing.

Vas blinks at him, surprised and pleased as he takes in Faraday’s meaning, and then lets his head fall slightly to one side. The smile that curls across his face is slow and wicked, and it lights little sparks in Faraday’s belly. He considers Faraday for a long, ponderous moment, dark eyes bleeding darker, sweet pink flush rising through his cheeks, flaring the markings on his face even brighter red.

“I think,” Vas says slowly, dragging the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, setting his teeth into that lush cushion for a beat, “that there’s at least one way to find out.”

Faraday feels his own grin split his face, and he fishes a few sovereigns out of his pocket to cover the damages to the wall before pushing up out of his seat so fast he nearly breaks the chair in his haste to beat Vas’s fluid saunter to the door.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Bueycito** basically means “little ox,” which was about as close as I could get to figuring out how to turn the Thedas slang practice of calling Quinari “ox-men” into a diminutive.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> And to those of you who have read and commented on my other fic, I know I haven’t answered but I have read and cherished every single one of your incredibly sweet and humbling comments. They’ve helped coax me through some serious confidence issues and I can’t say how much I appreciate them.
> 
> I know it’s not much but I hope that at the very least this dumb little ficlet brought another mini-dose of joy to your day!


End file.
